All Posts Tagged With: "art"
Berlin Street Art
Berlin is one of the most “bombed” cities in the world. (“Bombed” meaning “covered 
with graffiti”). Almost every corner of Berlin is tagged—no matter if the neighborhood is rich or poor. The wealthy, posh neighborhood of Mitte is plastered with street art from artists like XOOOOX, while poor, immigrant neighborhoods like Kreuzberg are battle grounds for street gangs and also the preferred canvases of famous international graffiti artists like the Italian artist Blu and the French artist JR.
It was amazing to see so much graffiti in Berlin, especially considering that the prevailing
stereotype of Germany is that it is a meticulously clean and orderly country. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the graffiti in Berlin, however, because
of the rich history of graffiti on the Berlin Wall. 
The western side of the Berlin Wall was a gigantic slate for Berlin’s creative counterculture to express themselves for nearly three decades. When the wall fell, the graffiti artists sought new canvases to bomb on sides of buildings, subway seats, street signs, doorways, mailboxes, boats, and almost any other surface you can dream up.
Berlin is an ever-evolving city of culture. Streetscapes, architecture, and fashion are constantly changing. It was truly a pleasure to walk outside my DDR-style apartment building each morning to discover a freshly painted piece of art to ponder for the day.
For more information about Berlin’s street art, check out this New York Times video, the following books, or my online photo album.
Lollaloons, Music Tunes & Freedom Fumes
Now I hear beats everywhere I rove. The pumping of the train. The dropping of the rain. Sometimes I’m alone and I hear the beat in my brain. I attended Lollapaloozalaoapoaallozzapoallozaalollazpoalloozalooza a few days ago. It was my first music festival. For many years I was stuck in the 1960’s, but since I have begun writing my own lyrics my appreciation for all genres of music has flowered.
Freedom and liberation and inspiration floated everywhere. I kept thinking about freedom. A music festival is the ultimate expression of freedom. Everyone acted as they pleased. Fans smoked pot in full public view without fear of arrest. The security seemed stricter about people sneaking in food than sneaking in alcohol or drugs. Everyone expressed their peculiar identities through hats and dirty shirts they bought in high school (I wore my Jim Morrison Doors shirt on Saturday. I purchased it freshman year while at Elk Grove High School.). Girls wore bikini tops and jean shorts and didn’t care that every nearby guy stared at their exposed skin. I didn’t realize how many people have tattoos until surrounded by dragons and butterflies and flowers in the dried fields of Grant Park.
The colors of the diversity and the freedom and the music melted and swarmed together to create one new and brilliant color. A light blue. The musicians leaned with all of their weight on the definition of music. Jamie Lidell did a white British funk fun groove; I had the most fun at his show. Newton Faulkner showed me his ability to simultaneously strum acoustic chords and thump a beat on the body of his guitar. He closed his show with a raucous and fun acoustic cover of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (shout out to Univ. of Illinois friend Zenobia Ravji, who is the niece of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury). Saul Williams jumped furiously around the stage trying to scare and awaken white people with his race conscious lyrics and his urban guitar riffs. His spoken word poetry makes me jealous of his lyrical command. I admire the courage of musicians and artists who throw all of their blood and chance for a practical, normal life on the floor to blindly and hotly pursue the impractical dream of becoming a rock ‘n’ roll star. I admire them because I got a law degree instead.
Freedom is the perfect state for humans. This festival allowed and encouraged freedom to flourish. But, America allows that too. In both the festival and in America, freedom is allowed but is rarely seized. Idiots abounded at Lolla. Most of the people didn’t give a damn about the music, brilliant though it was. Many of the people there were 20 year old punks and ditzes who took the Metra in from the white suburbs. Their parents have money. They wore expensively torn clothes from Hollister. Lolla was the thing to do that weekend and the place to get drunk. The slightly older 26 year olds were no better. They all looked unique when compared to society at-large, but they all looked the same when compared to other 26 year olds at the concert. They wore bandanas and tattoos and they smoked and drank. The proportion of people who smoked surprised me. It seemed that 82.7% of the entire country smoked cigarettes or pot, and perhaps they do. They wore groovy hats and refused to shave (some of the girls too). They wore pins and shirts preaching about the environment, but at the end of each day the Grant Park fields were impossible to walk through without crushing a plastic cup or bottle with every step. They littered without shame, or at the least trampled the litter of others without offering to recycle any of it. Most of these people appeared poorly educated and without grand futures. When rebellion from a dominant society results in the creation of an identifiable and cohesive sub-culture then it is no longer rebellion; it is conformity. The hippies rebelled from the dominant culture to conform to a sub-culture, but in the process forgot the original idea: expression of individuality. So too with this generation of self-proclaimed rebels (sorry, sometimes I like fragments). I didn’t see individuals; I saw people who conformed just as much to the sub-culture as the kids wearing Hollister. It is all ironic and pathetic.
Whenever people get drunk or high I become an observer. As many of you know, I have never been drunk or high, so I have done much observing. I sat on the trampled tan grass while I was waiting for the Kanye West concert. A stupid, drunk girl dropped her cup of beer on the ground near me and it splashed all over the left side of my favorite cowboy shirt. It mostly dried after about 30 minutes. Then another drunk girl dropped her beer near where I sat. Her cup had twice as much beer as the first cup. She apologized profusely and we became friends for two hours. I also made friends with some cool chemical engineers from Florida.
By the end of each day my feet stung as I walked through the beds of jellyfish. I was starving and thirsty and my legs cramped up. I had a headache and my contacts dried out from the dust blowing off the softball diamonds and all of the pot and cigarette smoke. I don’t give a damn. I loved it. My body still hurts. On Monday, I got trapped in the stairwell of my building and had to go down 42 floors of stairs to escape, which doubled my aches. The music pounds in my head. Notes have dangled from every steel beam and gentle leaf seen on my Loop walks to the UBS Tower. I hear a beat in the 32 year old drugged out mother with gray hair who sits on the west side of the Madison St. bridge with her daughter everyday and shakes a cup to beg for spare change from the slick suited corporate men walking to Union and Ogilvie Stations to leave for white homes (I have become one of them; Borg). When she does not jangle her cup at a regular interval, my mind forces her to do so. I hear an urban beat backing up Shakespeare’s poetic rhythm as I read Julius Ceasar on my daily Metra train rides to Union Station.
The music. The irony. The freedom. Yea.
What I Did on My Six-Month Vacation
Six months ago, I took leave of Urbanagora in order to work on my first book, Riding the Hell-bound Train. I am happy to report that, as of this morning, it is done. I am going to do one last out-loud read-through to entertain the cats and catch those nuances of language not found any other way (learned that the hard way when I stopped in the middle of a public reading and said out loud, “Man, that last sentence didn’t make a lick o’ sense”). After that, all 94,000 words will go to my editor at Peregrination Press, I look over the uncorrected galleys line-by-line, and the book should be available for purchase after July 15th.
Just as I finished, Augur sent me a PM saying that “if I didn’t start writing for the blog again, I won’t have any audience to sell my book to.” This will never do. Therefore, I want to let you know that I am back and will remain so in parallel with my new career in fantasy fiction. Since the book’s been the main subject of my life for the last six months, I will describe in this first article what I learned while writing it. Other writers have been really kind and helpful to me, perhaps I can return the favor for somone in our audience.
The first thing I didn’t expect was how many people a writer needs. I’ve been lucky that my wives, Marcey, kitten, and Cheron, helped me both as first readers for my shitty first drafts and as the last people who looked over the rewrites for the continuity errors that cropped up. This, at times, put a heavy strain on my marriage–there is a good reason writers drink, spouses of writers drink, and there’s an ungodly divorce rate. I am insufferable when I’m working–demanding, insecure, pompous, and driven. I want to go on record saying that not only could I not have written the book without them, I am amazed they’re still letting me into their bedrooms.
It doesn’t stop there. Sean-Thomas Gunnell’s my cover artist and we’ve been throwing art back and forth to each other, me bitching about how long it’s taking and he trying to give me what I want, no matter how difficult. The covers are very close to done, if someone can show me what to embed .jpgs in, I’ll add them to this article. It’s been a learning experience.
The wonderful Allie Mazan has been working as my web-mistress and publicist for no money at all so far. I’m going to try to find some way for a starving artist to make it up to her–the website design alone is worth a hell of a lot. She’s been a constant source of inspiration and another first reader as well as my personal version of Pepper Potts.
My editor, John Barnstead, is going to be involved in the next step of the process. He encouraged me all along and without him, the book would never have been written in the first place.
So, What Did I Learn?
Writing is honest work, but not like any I have experienced before. The extreme-endorphin thrill of inspiration when the words flow from your brain to paper in an attempt to achieve telepathy is far, far better than the best sex I’ve ever had. In contrast, rewriting is the ninth-circle of hell, comparable to removing layers of skin with a cheese grater. No one should ever try to write because they want to get rich–writing is done because you have no choice. I started as an adequate writer. After six months of blood, sweat, tears, and dead trees stretching from here to Oregon, I think I am on the way to being a damn good one.
I read two books by authors that helped me a lot. First was Stephen King’s On Writing. He wrote the first half before and the second half following his near-fatal accident. This book is chock-full of the kind of advice first-time writers need. The best part for me came at the end, when he gave an example of the first-draft of one of his stories followed by what it looked like after he had taken the re-write pen to it. I was beginning my rewrite when I read that part and said to myself, “Oh, my God, he’s got as much ink on that manuscript as I do. I don’t suck that bad, really.” The other book was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Not only are there tons of practical hints within it on how to develop your art, she is so batshit nuts you realize you’re really not that crazy, after all–it’s wonderful. It has not escaped my notice that both of them used to be heavy-duty alcoholics and demonstrate that you don’t have to drink to do good work.
Above my desk I have a list of rules for writing that I’ve added to as I went along. I am sure that they’re not finished, but they got me this far, so I’ll share them.
Don’t Suck!
Phil and Kaja Foglio gave a talk at the Association for Computing Machinery conference about how they turned their money-losing comic into a cash cow by giving it away for free on the ‘Net. They told me that right now is the best, the easiest time to get work out to the public and that one can be a success even without the traditional filters of the big commercial publishing houses if you followed the above rule.
The Road to Hell Is Paved with Adverbs
Stephen King is right–adverbs weaken verbs and should be avoided, especially in cases where you’re doing dialog. The biggest exception is in cases where there is a discrepancy between what the dialog says and what the speaker means. In my rewrites, every adverb is examined and I end up keeping less than one in ten.
Don’t Tell, Show
It took a while to catch on to this. One sentence of action is worth a paragraph of description. This connects to the next one,
Never Use the Passive Voice Unless Necessary
There’s a reason that our eyes are in front–we’re built for action and speed. No one is interested in how “the tree was framed by the picket fence.” We’re wired, instead, to notice that “the picket fence frames the tree.”
Cut 10%
Anne Lamott says everyone has shitty first-drafts. She’s right about me, I don’t know about anyone else. The first draft is to get the stuff out of your head. It’s going to be bloated and full and in order for anyone to want to come close to it, it’s going to have to be pared–pared with a machete. At first, cutting back your prose is like killing your children. Later on, when your writing gets better, it gets much worse.
Use “Said”
Never Start a Sentence with “Suddenly” or use “All Hell Broke Loose”
I learned these from Elmore Leonard. He has forty-four novels of which 70% is dialog and the reader is never, for a moment, in doubt about who is talking. He writes without using synonyms for “said” because the human brain is programmed to ignore the word. If you write this way, it makes dialog like a radio play with the reader filling in nuances better than the writer can.
How to Write a Story–ABDCE
Anne Lamott again, with a structure that can be used for anything from a short-short to a novel trilogy:
Action, at the start, to draw the reader in
Background, so they know why what’s happening is important
Development, to show change
Climax, where something important happens–a death, a birth (or rebirth) or a mystery solved
Ending, where you give the reader a present for bothering with you–something to think about as they walk away.
Finish
None of this is worth a good goddamn if no one ever sees your work. It’s the hardest step, the scariest step, but sooner or later, if you’re going to be a writer, you have to finish the book. The greatest fear when you do, I think, is that you’re never going to be able to do it again. In part, writing this piece today is proof to me that I still can do my job. Take the old manuscript out of your drawer and start working on it again. It might not be as bad as you think.
We’re All Terminal
There’s a good reason for us to do the best job every day that we possibly can–someday will be the last day of our life. If you write as if you wanted the piece before you to be the last, greatest example of your work, it’s going to be worth the time and the trouble. There’s good reason to follow this philosophy–sooner or later, you’re going to be right.
It’s good to be back at Urbanagora and I’m looking forward to our upcoming change in format, so I will no longer have to worry about post length. Thanks a lot for your patience, your loyalty, and your friendship. Buy my book–I think you’ll like it.
Tom Trumpinski
The War of the Adverbs
Obama’s Graphic Design
Just to buttress Augur’s previous post with a far simpler explanation for Obama’s success, might I suggest it all comes down to his superb use of fonts? Consider this interview with a very impressed graphic designer:
Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don’t understand how it’s happening. It’s unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted…I’m not sure that the commander-in-chief proves his mettle by getting everyone at his rallies to set their signs in the same typeface, but as someone who knows how hard that is, I’m very impressed.
Just another data point to consider if you’re on the fence this year. And in case anybody’s worried that Obama’s really a secret militant Muslim bent on giving aid to the terrorists, consider his choice to use Gotham as the font on his campaign signs:
Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Swiss. It’s very American.
Personally, I’m a fan of Verdana. But, then, I’m also a traitor to America.
Obama’s Graphic Design
Just to buttress Augur’s previous post with a far simpler explanation for Obama’s success, might I suggest it all comes down to his superb use of fonts? Consider this interview with a very impressed graphic designer:
Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don’t understand how it’s happening. It’s unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted…I’m not sure that the commander-in-chief proves his mettle by getting everyone at his rallies to set their signs in the same typeface, but as someone who knows how hard that is, I’m very impressed.
Just another data point to consider if you’re on the fence this year. And in case anybody’s worried that Obama’s really a secret militant Muslim bent on giving aid to the terrorists, consider his choice to use Gotham as the font on his campaign signs:
Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Swiss. It’s very American.
Personally, I’m a fan of Verdana. But, then, I’m also a traitor to America.
Obama’s Graphic Design
Just to buttress Augur’s previous post with a far simpler explanation for Obama’s success, might I suggest it all comes down to his superb use of fonts? Consider this interview with a very impressed graphic designer:
Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don’t understand how it’s happening. It’s unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted…I’m not sure that the commander-in-chief proves his mettle by getting everyone at his rallies to set their signs in the same typeface, but as someone who knows how hard that is, I’m very impressed.
Just another data point to consider if you’re on the fence this year. And in case anybody’s worried that Obama’s really a secret militant Muslim bent on giving aid to the terrorists, consider his choice to use Gotham as the font on his campaign signs:
Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Swiss. It’s very American.
Personally, I’m a fan of Verdana. But, then, I’m also a traitor to America.
Banksy—Graffiti/Painting reconfiguration artist in the UK
Since I am new to the blog–I asked Augur what sort of things would be good to post. He told me anything—so I chose to feature some artwork.
So here is an artist I would like to share with you. His name is Banksy and you can check him out here http://www.banksy.co.uk/
I particularly like this drawing of hunters creeping up on some grocery carts; notice the carts are three different sizes (Mama cart, Papa cart, and baby cart). This drawing reminds me of my monthly shopping excursion to Meijer where my primal instincts lead me to “hunt” for deals in the protein sections and “gather” in the produce aisles.
I hope you enjoy perusing through his work.
Avant Gart
First, no, I did not misspell the title of this post.
In my quest to become ever more influential and subversive in society, I have chosen to dive into realms of expression that I have absolutely no talent in. I’ve written about 30 songs in the last few months and created the two pieces of computer art below.
Someday I intend on painting these visions rather than overpaying for modern crap, the point of which, as Stanley Fish recently opined in the New York Times, is to have no point at all. I agree with him when he admitted struggling with respecting art that found its most profound point in giving up on explaining the human condition, conceding it instead as too complex and too liquid to be explained and so artists near my generation should not even attempt to explain even a sliver of who we are. This is generally my entire problem with Brian as a person and his musical/artistic tastes (hahahaha, kind of kidding you there Brian…kind of.):
The idea is to find bits and pieces of detritus and put them together in surprising and sometimes shocking ways. There’s a picture of Mel Gibson suspended from a long pole attached to a bicycle…What it embraces — the ephemeral and the insubstantial — I shun, and what I embrace — work that aspires to permanence — it pokes fun at.
During my last visit to the Chicago Art Institute I quickly walked through their featured exhibit by an artist who in every one of his paintings pressed his hand on the canvas with a particular color of paint and then proceeded to mislabel the color. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t interesting. All of the paintings looked this way. I was horrified.
I prefer meaning and grand Achillean (I just made this word up, don’t go look it up in shame) attempts at human historical permanence. The first picture below I call “Epic Precipice” and the second I call “Brimming Spark.” I realize they probably suck, but I can prove they have meaning if I talk about them long enough. I will divulge my intent if anyone out there cares, until that is proven to me, I am curious if anyone has a guess as to my meaning…consider them puzzles.
My Favorite Atheist Talks About Religion and the Arts
A tip of the Hatlo Hat goes to Vox Day for linking to this wonderful discussion by Camille Paglia in Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics.
This, in particular spoke to me:
“To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.”
There are also links to three other talks by the Divine Ms. P on the page. I highly recommend them for those who want to delve further into her philosophy.
Tom